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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27634670">Harmony</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12'>Ferith12</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hetalia: Axis Powers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Music</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:14:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>703</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27634670</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a room with a window in it, and two men playing music.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Austria &amp; Prussia (Hetalia)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Harmony</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There is a room with a window in it, and two men playing music.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The music flows through the room.  It is like sunlight, and shadows, it is color, splashed across the unassailable canvass of time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The pianist’s fingers are nimble, sure.  He is the better musician of the two, but now he acts as the accompanist to the flutist’s solo.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And oh, how the other man plays.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If there is magic in the world it is music.  Music is emotion, held within the air, it is humanity made tangible and intangible at once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The flutist plays.  The pianist listens, and follows after, notes as sure and light as the breeze ruffling tree leaves, setting light and shadow to dancing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is a song, and these are hearts, and in their beating and their breathing they create the rhythm that is life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At first, Austria was resentful of this idea, but Hungary badgered him into it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The idea of being a musical afterthought to Prussia of all people was repulsive to him, and at first their collaboration was more like a musical war between them, each of them endeavoring to outshine the other, to catch the other out in a mistake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But this…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is music.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prussia is no great musician, the piece he chose is simple and one he knows well.  Austria, too, is familiar with the piece, and though he has never played this arrangement, the notes come so easily to his fingers he barely needs to think of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At some point, Prussia forgot himself, forgot that this was Austria listening, Austria playing in collaboration, and at some point Austria began to listen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Prussia does not play as Austria imagined he should, he does not play like a soldier.  Prussia plays like a stream, dancing over stones.  He plays as though the music is a long lost friend.  He does not play with a strict rhythm, or hold perfectly to the music written down on sheets he has, Austria would guess, long since memorized.  His music ebbs and flows, and at first Austria thought it was merely Prussia’s way of being troublesome, and then as a sort of challenge, but then he found the soul of it and was swept away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is following, and it is beautiful.  Listening, supporting, and he can feel the music well up within him, shared between them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They reach the end, Austria plays the final chord, and the silence hangs there around them for a moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That,” Austria says, “Was excellent.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is high praise.  He does not compliment music lightly, not his own, and certainly not his once-enemy’s.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What was it?  Seventh time’s the charm?” Prussia says, “I just hope it’s this good during the performance.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, something always goes wrong during a concert,” Austria says, with the authority of long experience, “But no one ever notices.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is strange, Prussia’s shyness, when usually he is so brash.  But then, music is something different, something personal.  Music is emotion, it is connection, it is taking your soul, opening your heart and sharing it with the composer, with the rest of your ensemble, and with the world.  Music is honesty, even when it is lying, and Austria has always bared that honesty to all the world, to take the place of all the truths he never spoke with words.  But to Prussia, beneath all his outward frankness, this sort of vulnerability is something to keep hidden in the dark.  Germany has heard him play, but even Hungary had only heard him once, and that was a light, military air without much substance.  Austria feels as if he has come to know him better in the past few hours than he previously had in centuries.  Or at least, he has seen parts of him he had not thought existed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,”  Prussia says, “So long as I don’t disappoint Germany too much.  I’m sure you will manage to make it sound beautiful no matter how I embarrass myself.  You are good for a few things, I suppose.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before, Austria would have taken insult, but now he merely appreciates the sideways sort of compliment that it is.  Perhaps, he thinks, this is the beginnings of mutual respect.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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